


Like an Open Book

by goodnicepeople



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, angus' parents, hyper intelligent and lonely children geniuses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 06:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8521591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnicepeople/pseuds/goodnicepeople
Summary: Angus has a Big Thought then, which is not uncommon for Angus, who is always chasing thoughts. But this one follows as such:He is alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I write one thing, and one thing only: isolated, precocious children with a desire to please and find some meaning in their lives. This is my take on a potential backstory for Angus, though it mostly deals with present-day.

"Sorry, what's that you say?"

"It's not in Neverwinter, not exactly. Just a bit north."

Avi's face goes a bit hard. Interesting, Angus thinks. Tracking him, as Avi stands up a little taller. Rolls his shoulders back. A man in thought. Prepping defense.

"Um," Avi hedges. "You got permission for this solo trip?"

"I travel by myself all the time," Angus protests. He shoves one nervous fist into his pants pocket. "Just last week I went to Neverwinter to pick up a rare book for Leon."

"I know buddy," Avi says sort of hollowly, and Angus reflexively does what a detective does, and Assesses the Situation. Avi's mouth is twisted up in such a strange way, his eyes oddly impassive. The way he reaches up and pinches his earlobe for a second, thoughtfully, distractedly. _Guilty_ , Angus thinks, like a detective does, suddenly feeling a spike of his own guilt for treating a friend like a suspect.

"You're not going to Neverwinter though, are you?"

Angus rocks back nervously on his heels and huffs a short breath.

"Not today, sir, no. Close by. Port Llast."

"That's where you're from, isn't it, kiddo?"

"Yes, sir. Good memory," Angus commends, very genuinely.

Avi pinches his earlobe again. Angus sucks at a loose tooth in the bottom left pocket of his mouth, feeling it press back against his tongue. Avi looks up and away.

"I think maybe you gotta chat with The Director, bud."

Evading eye contact. A finger hooked into his belt loop, tugging hard. Angus thinks it again. Guilty.

\-------

It seems like it should've been something you felt, Angus thinks numbly. Being erased. Your very existence being wiped clean from anyone who'd ever known you, thought of you, even come across you in passing.

Instead, it'd been done nearly three months ago, and Angus hadn't known. Hadn't felt a thing, blithely happy and busy; happy because he was busy, busier than ever because he was happy. He thinks of what he's read about people who get caught in a riptide. How it isn't always water sucking and churning around you. How sometimes it's just that you open your eyes and you are suddenly too far out at sea. 

"Did you... was it because my parents were asking about me?" Angus had asked, enveloped in a too-large chair in the Director's office, hands folded politely, cap removed in a measure of professional deference.  

"Oh," she had replied, looking momentarily stricken. She blinked once. Heavily. A cautious redirect. "No, Angus. The people you'd worked for solving mysteries for in Neverwinter. They kept trying to locate you to hire you again. They came across some of your notes about the other 'missing people' - it was becoming - " 

He'd thanked her for the truth, for her time, assured her he knew what this job could be when he took it. And when she said, _I'm very sorry Angus_ , he accepted a warm and genuine handshake from her, but had almost wished she'd said anything else. He wished he hadn't even asked. Certainly not about his parents. He thinks, fitfully, if he could go back in time, he'd stuff those words back in his mouth and just pretend pretend pretend like a suspect with an alibi. 

Angus briefly entertains the image of his parents' house now, all the pictures once containing Angus now magically replaced with a potted plant. He thinks of his parents posed stiffly, flanking a fern, their cold hands resting on a squat terracotta pot. It wouldn't be too different from the way things used to be, is the thing. It's lousy. But funny enough to make Angus want to laugh, which feels a little nice, considering the day he's had. He pokes his tongue into that irritating loose tooth again. With it comes an alien sort of discomforting feeling, a tiny pang of irritating wrongness with each prod.

Angus has a Big Thought then, which is not uncommon for Angus, who is always chasing thoughts. But this one follows as such:

He is alone. Not just because he is forgotten. Not just because, at this moment, he is traipsing an empty, cavernous hallway with no one else in sight. But because here he is with a mouth full of embarassing baby teeth, railing against the notion that he's just some kid, while he experiences profound and devastating complications that even most adults couldn't grapple with. 

That exact notion may not have manifested so clearly so quickly in those exact words, but it is the gist of the thought that unfolds for Angus as he walks down the long hallway.

Would his parents miss him, even if he hadn't been erased? How long would it have taken them to notice? Was it, perhaps, somehow his own fault for not wanting and bothering to visit earlier?

He passes the dining hall, somewhat empty in the post-breakfast shuffle. There's a staff member whistling as he wipes down a far table and, as it appears to Angus, a floating magazine. Some gossipy, easy-read rag picked up from somewhere down on Faerûn, levitating at eye level above one of the tables, obscuring the reader's face but not their large, recognizable hat. 

A hand peeks out from behind the magazine and makes a lazy circle in the air, and Angus notices the spoon in the coffee mug beneath it on the table stirs, untouched, following the motion.

Angus likes most people, but Angus really likes Taako, who perplexes him as much as he feels he understands him. And it is maybe this - the parts of Taako he unabashedly lies out for everyone to see crashed up against the things he so clearly keeps tamped down - that makes Angus like him all the more. The warmth of Taako's attention, if you are so lucky to ever have it, is a furnace.

And today, more than maybe ever, he wants it, very desperately.

Angus shuffles over to his empty table quickly and clambers onto the bench across from him.

"Hey, cookie," Taako says, not quite looking around his magazine.

"Hello, Taako, sir. I hope I'm not intruding."

"Nah, I'm just at the gym," Taako replies. And, sensing Angus's unasked question replies, "Well, that's what I told Magnus and Merle so they wouldn't tag along and steal breakfast off my plate. Dumb animals."

"Aha," Angus nods. Taako reaches up and turns one of the pages in front of him. Angus wishes he could see his face better. It's hard to intuit and assess when you can't observe your target. No. Not target. Friend, he corrects.

"Sir, may I ask you a question?" 

"Hit me," Taako says. Angus inhales and manages to ask,

"Do you think the Bureau is better off with me working here?"

"Oh, for sure, my man, no question," Taako replies, but he doesn't put down his magazine. His voice is sincere but distant, the way Taako can often be. Not unkind but just out of reach. Angus feels he cannot complain. It was the answer he'd hoped for, so to expect anything more bordered on foolish. _Childish_ , he corrects himself, scoldingly.

"I mean, you're super smart. And that's good."

"Thank you, sir, that means a lot to me."

Silence again. Angus tries to deduce what he might have been expecting as the ideal outcome of this conversation, but he has no answer, which makes it a terrible mission in the first place. Without clear questions posited, you gain no real answers. Of course. He sucks on his lower lip and thinks of a polite way to excuse himself. 

A sharp little pop. The sudden metallic tang of blood. Angus squeaks a reflexive little sound and politely covers his mouth.

Taako lowers the magazine between them with a quizzical look, watching as Angus fishes something out of his mouth and places it on a spare napkin, his face flushed bright red.

"It's - um - " he stammers. "I lost a tooth." 

There it is, alien looking and tiny on the napkin between them. Angus is, in this moment, very, very embarrassed by it and almost wishes he'd swallowed it instead.

"Stupid baby teeth," he mutters apologetically, "Should've lost them all by now."

"Well, lookit you, buckaroo," Taako chirps, with an unusual enthusiasm. "What're you going to do with it?"

Angus looks up at Taako, who does not seem to be joking at all. He even Assesses the Situation, just to be sure. No new clues. All signs - against the odds - point to earnestness.

"Throw it away, I guess," Angus answers, at length.

Taako splutters and waves a dismissive hand between them.

"That's dumb. Let's do my thing instead. Want to turn it into something?"

Which is precisely what Taako does, who with a twist of his finger gives it little wings and watches it flit around the table like a horsefly. 

"Very good, sir," Angus laughs.

"You try," Taako leads. "I'm serious! I'll show you."

\------ 

Angus looks up at his well-dressed parents, who look back at him expectantly. Not without a measure of discomfort or impatience, like they are awaiting test results. 

"Thank you," Angus says, turning the book over in his hands. He puts on a big, big smile. Part of being a good detective is being able to blend in. Pull off a disguise, even if that doesn't always mean a costume. 

"I really love it, thank you," he says, and he bounces in his chair. "I'll go put it away in my room right now." 

And he does. He bounds upstairs and closes his bedroom door behind him. Walks to the bookshelf and slots the _Caleb Cleveland: Kid Cop_ novel he'd just received next to three identical copies -- all birthday gifts from the previous, consecutive years.

Angus looks out the window, south towards Neverwinter. A place where his grandfather lives, who seems to forget him more and more every time he visits, but lets him hole up in his library and doesn't seem to mind or say much about it. This is something which Angus prefers to his parents who also seem to forget him but play at some artifice of love and understanding where Angus knows there is none. 

Here he has one of his Big Thoughts, which Angus is wont to have.

His own life is somewhat of a mystery to him. But mysteries are his favorite thing, after all, and perhaps this is just the part where the clues are frustrating and disparate, and Angus just needs to ask a few more good questions and take a few more good guesses, and the meaning will start to show itself. The answer to all of this unfolding, bright and singular and satisfying.

The beginning of a very good story.


End file.
